Row over Iceland MPs’ crass, sexist bar talk

Calls for resignation after they were recorded using crude language for female colleagues, disabled ex-MP

REYKJAVIK Arow has erupted in Iceland, with calls for the resignation of numerous MPs, including a former prime minister, after a three-hour-long conversation in a bar, where they used crass language to describe female colleagues and a disabled former MP, was made public.

Iceland has a female Prime Minister, Katrin Jakobsdottir. Four Centre Party MPs later apologised. Their jibes were directed at, among others, ex-MP Freyja Haraldsdottir, a disabled woman and wellknown disability rights activist.

Haraldsdottir has osteogenesis imperfecta (brittle bone disease) said on Facebook that former prime minister Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson had apologised to her personally. “To apologise, while trying to explain, explain, and just lie about what happened, is not an apology,” she said.

“There are a thousand and one ways to express differences of opinion other than mocking a woman’s body and appearance,” she wrote on Facebook .

The four Centre Party MPs and two MPs from the People's Party — all in the Opposition — were secretly recorded by a member of the public in a Reykjavik bar. A woman MP who was part of the group did not use offensive language.

In the recording, they could be heard using the word “b****” and other offensive words several times. The recording was sent to the media in Iceland, and later went viral on social media. The anonymous citizen said he used his mobile phone to record the conversation because he was shocked by the language the MPs had used, the Iceland Monitor reported.

Bare-armed Aussie journalist gets an apology from government

Patricia Karvelas, a journalist who was thrown out of Australia’s parliament for allegedly breaching the dress code, has received an apology from government.

Apresenter for ABC News, Karvelas was asked to leave a parliamentary session on Monday because she was showing “too much skin”, prompting outrage on social media.

“I would like to apologise on behalf of this side of the House to Ms Karvelas for being ejected yesterday from the press gallery,” Defence Minister Christopher Pyne said in Parliament on Tuesday.

And Speaker Tony Smith said the journalist was wearing “professional business attire” and said he had ordered a review of the parliamentary dress code following the incident. “She should, in hindsight, not have been asked to leave,” Smith said.

Karvelas praised the “sensible outcome” on Twitter. “Pleased that female journalists will be free to wear professional clothing that reflects what politicians wear,” she tweeted.